


Professional Widow

by Missy



Category: Professional Wrestling, World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: Altered Mental States, Ambition, Gen, Memories, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-27
Updated: 2013-12-27
Packaged: 2018-01-06 08:15:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1104528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/pseuds/Missy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stream-of-consciousness POV on AJ, as she lies in bed with her recently (as of 10/08/13) (non-worked) concussion, and all of the dizziness that inspires.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Professional Widow

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Wrestle_Bang in '13!

Her mother told her to be wary. Avoid the forbidden apple of romance at all costs, because the ones who fall, fall the hardest and ruin themselves in the dust and dirt of the common rabble.

And April was above the common rabble.

That was what her mother told her often, and something she took to heart. Here was a good girl, a smart girl, a funny girl. She deserved the very best, and no matter what anyone told her she should take that notion to heart. Good girls have got to work with what they have, and what AJ had was anything but stereotypically sexy.

So she learned at the bended knee of other women who had been through a similar wringer. Lita, with her baggy pants and boss flying splashes; even Trish, with her dedication to the craft and determination to learn from her mistakes were fodder for her ambitions, hopes, and wishes. Marlena with her sex appeal and Sable with her brassy bitchiness. The Kat, with her willingness to bare herself in a statement of artistic bravado. April could adapt herself to all of these poses by high school and practiced them in the quiet of her boudoir, throwing coquettish glances at invisible men while arrogantly stirring an invisible glass of tea like Scarlett O’Hara on a bender.

The mental images which were glued to the foundation of April’s imagination were far-flung, but none of them involved kissing a handsome boy, though stealing their credit cards often slipped into her fantasies. There will be no snarling monsters for her, no, no Jake Roberts cackling from the sidelines while she cowered in maidenly fear. She will be as pure and sweet as a princess, a princess with fire under her skin and coal-dark malfeasance running through her veins. The trick will be the lie. The trick will be maintaining the cover. For this was no helpless maiden waiting in an ivory tower for her immanent rescue. 

No, when AJ grew up, she was going to paddle her own canoe. 

For better or for worse. 

 

****   
She starts at the bottom – the place where every wrestler in the history of the world started. She scuffed for dimes in bingo halls, VFWs and bars. She strove and learned – braced her head, her neck, her back. Her legs and behind burned from the violent exertion, but she loved it more than any pleasure bestowed her. And April was good at it. She was impressive; she could be sweet or funny on the turn of a dime. She could act as well as wrestle, which drew her a lot of favorable attention.

Tryouts begat farm league status. She spent hours in the back of cars that stank of weed and piss to ferry herself from town to town; she sold Polaroids outside of packed gyms, posed in front of banners and smiled with mock-vacuousness for babies and old ladies. She could rip up signs. She could splash and flip and brawl and gig people open with the sharp end of a razor blade. She felt stronger and more capable than she had when she dreamed of these many nights past; she had learned so much during her long sojourns that the scheming girl she had been once upon a time had taken full flower within her heart, making her a dragon, a fearless warrior.

The self-rescuing princess.

She had a visual hook; she drew eyes. She knew how to nurture business relationships and force them to flower. He was daring and smart and pretty, just as her mother had sworn she would be so many years ago. Titan came calling – almost a foregone conclusion at that point, but they did. They wanted her. When they called her up, she’d learned how to seal the polish on a pair of chipped nails, how to hail a cab with both of her hands full, and how to smile when it felt like she was being smacked by a crowbar in her side. It was a piecemeal education, but one she lived with every beat of her blood-red heart. 

**** 

It was nice to be needed, but AJ wasn’t sure she wanted to be wanted this way. Paired up with her old girlfriend Kaitlyn, told to draw audience applause, she ended up in the one place she knew she’d never feel comfortable – the NXT Competiton. 

It wasn’t that the other girls were plastic wastes of space with fake tits and one hand in McMahon’s pants…no wait, they were all fake bitches with plastic tits. Most of them got into the business because they wanted to be pretty little sweethearts like Christy Hemme – none of them fantasized about doing a stint at the top of the card; none of them knew how to perform a hurricanrana. She knew she was being set up to fail, but chose to take it as another test; if she flew, then she’d impress somebody. If she figured out how to get herself across as an interesting and important person, then smash every single preconception that developed in her wake. 

It would be a very long road to hoe through.

But AJ was willing to walk that path. She didn’t wait this long to become arm candy (though army candy had its benefits – look at how Liz managed to work it out), and she definitely didn’t have time to pretend that the spotlight wasn’t what she truly craved. She simply sat back and let her eyes flash, let the world’s attention focus itself on her. In the end, she drew attention in her own special way – by being herself. Natalya didn’t see that in her, Natalya couldn’t stand to share the spotlight with her, but AJ had forced her to see the truth – in the end.

***

It was Daniel first. Daniel first and Daniel primarily, with his shaggy beard and winning attitude. He seemed so commanding and that was what attracted both her calculation and her business acumen like a bee to a flower. His intellectualism and superiority complex cover up what she’s long suspected him of harboring –a desperation, a sense of inferiority. She infected this chink in his armor like a virus, invading and prodding like a leech. Just from observing him during Tough Enough she knew that he’ll be easy enough to coax. Deep within him lay a need to dominate and peck at, a need to conquer. She knew the role and was loathe to play it, but gritted her teeth and went along with it, head bowed and eyes cast toward her knees. She allowed him to bellow at and abuse her; she even lets him shove her during one fateful encounter. Daniel was foolish enough to think he was in control.

He couldn’t be further from the truth.

AJ came to see him as someone less than human by the time Punk arrived on the scene. In her eyes, he was sort of like a collie, begging her for a handful of kibble or a pretty new toy. She pretended to hang on his every word like a holy fool, her eyes heaven-bound and her body language timid. She’d spent hours studying footage of Miss Elizabeth with Randy Savage, and keeps her chin pointed low and her shoulders stooped inward, trying to radiate submissiveness. With Punk, she’s eager and open and friendly, slightly dorky – enough to make him see something of a kindred spirit in her walk, her smile, her confident bounce. Though she seemed nothing more than an insubstantial puff of sweetness and light, she calculated and schemed.

Part of that control was pretending she was afraid of Daniel when he shouted and screamed. Her eyes remained focused upon the floor, her eyes downcast and her features a mou of discontent. Her flesh learned to prickle and turn whenever he touched hers, and she trained her tears to arrive on demand. She knew one of them would save her; Punk or Kane, maybe both – wouldn’t that be a delicious conflict. She spends many a night dreaming about fists colliding with lips and heads hitting turnbuckles, the ground turning a stunning shade of red before her giggling face. 

And so she made Daniel think she was both oblivious and desperate, in search of love from any and every man in the near vicinity. Punk saw himself as something less than a knight – she wasn’t dumb enough to hitch herself to his unwilling but rising star. 

Which was how Kane found himself thrown into the equation.

*** 

It was simply imitation being the sincerest form of flattery. Bouncing out in his mask and playing the vulnerability game seemed to draw his attention easily – of course it did, she’d seen his progress with Lita. She knew that he was incurably attracted to damsels, and so she came off as dauntingly feckless. 

She had teased Kane because it was fun, at first, and because it’s a lot harder to get attention from anybody else on the roster, and because he was as mysterious as the many romantic heroes hidden within the perfumed pages of her teenage romance novels. He finds her kind of funny, apparently, or so she hears through the grapevine. At first she thought he didn’t want anything to do with her. Then she finds herself trying to draw his attention, just to see how far he’ll go, and how much he wants to push it with her. She absorbed her lessons like a good girl and learns her way to the next week, the next town, the next lie.

She counted on Punk’s savior complex to kick itself into high gear – mercifully, it did, once Kane tried to carry her away after she’d been knocked out during a match. Punk wasn’t too interested in carrying her off, anyway – and she knew that his ambivalent attention was enough to stir up Daniel’s jealous attention.

Naturally, they asked her to choose, so she hemmed and hawed and tried to seem genuinely conflicted. It was important for Daniel to believe that she had no idea who she might pick, important that he think her completely conflicted, for otherwise he might see through her bluff and try to force her to betray herself. And naturally she wasn’t about to betray herself, not at this stage in the game.

Daniel was the one who broke. She knew it somehow, deep down, even as Punk recoiled from her, disgust and reproach in his sarcastic eyes. It was Daniel who offered to make an ‘honest woman’ of her, and Daniel who bought her a ring and started talking about keeping her forever.

Forever. What a slippery little word that was.

As she wrestled, she’d plot what she planned to do during the ceremony. Maybe she’d poison his cake and leave him crying for mercy in a toilet stall. No, it’s been done. Running him over with a car would be completely passé, and who had time to wrangle up a snake? Ahh, she had to think on this one, truly and heavily think upon it!

Kaitlyn prodded her in the ribs, and straight out of her reverie. She stared down at her own hand in bemusement. Her arm had torqued tightly enough around the other woman’s windpipe to choke off her air.

 

*** 

A miracle arrived on the shoulder of one Vince McMahon. VINCE MCMAHON. She mentally spake his name the way most people speak of Jesus Christ. Vince McMahon, orchestrator of her fantasies and developer of her dreams. The guy who had completely and totally made her life a fiesta of rich fantasy and hopeful dreams. One dinner with him and he swore he saw a kindred spirit inAJ.

Later, AJ laughed and flirted mildly with the older man; she’d seen this page of the script. Vince adored younger woman, ones with enormous breasts and well-coiffed hair. She was rather stunned that he showed some sort of interest in her. But Vince McMahon was no holy fool, and his interest was something less than purely sexual. Sharks had a way of recognizing their own, by the sway of their backs or the trail of blood that followed them over the ocean floor. Vince saw potential in AJ – and he also saw the way her romantic history seemed to be tripping up her career.

“Let me fix that for you,” Vince ordered, his voice booming out over a table laden with blininis, caviar and crème frachie. “Let me help you take this game to the next level.”

Her eyes lit up with mischievous glee. The tip of her finger plunged into her bloody mary, and AJ stirred it about with a wicked glow glittering away in her eye. Prepared to talk or wrestle her way into the higher stratosphere of the WWE upper crust, she hadn’t expected to be given what he offered. For the first time in her life, she was fully taken aback by what the business had provided her.

And there Vince was, telling AJ that she reminded him of his daughter and he wanted to give AJ a leg up in the company. Naturally she agreed to the very idea of working under Vince McMahon with vibrant enthusiasm – and, quite naturally, he decided to sign off on her general manager position immediately. But secrecy was the key. At least for now.

*** 

She could’ve swum back home through the river of pity Bryan’s “abuse” had won her. She recoiled internally, unable to accept the fact that they all saw her as this inferior intellectually – every single one of them. AJ had more empty couches and guest rooms offered to her in the weeklong span between the engagement and the televised wedding. She simpered something about her true love for Daniel and how impossible it would be for her to part with him, that the marriage was what she really wanted and she was perfectly within her rights to become his wife and what was it to any of them to interfear.

None of them had ever seen a wrestling wedding, apparently. How could they not have known that a snake should pop out of a box, or a hillbilly should smash someone’s face into a cake, or a priest should pull off his rubber mask and cackle manically like a Batman villain, preventing the happy couple from indulging in years of connubial bliss.

But no one asked questions. Which was how she shocked the world by skipping away from the ring a single woman in her high-tops and beautiful white dress.

Punk actually congratulated her on her little coup, but it was far too late for praise and amusement now.

** 

It wasn’t easy being GM, of course, though she tried to make it look that way. She managed to make popular matches, and received a rather exorbitant amount of praise for her booking choices. But it was getting a little boring, and she really missed doing what she loved best – what was that called again? Oh, wrestling – the true love of her life, the great reason for her being –and at this point something to occupy her time between meetings. But she skipped out every week in her pin striped suit, and the audience seemed to love her more every day – sympathy carried over, to her relief, from one mad story to the next, until they cheered the opening notes of her music, the tootling orgasm of light and sound that was her entrance. 

And then came John.

Ivory Soap pure John, one hundred percent sweet and clean John. She takes a look at him, sees the company’s fastest rising star, and tries to hook herself up into his celestial orbit. John was reluctant to meet her eyes or hold her hand, but he knew the universal language of female desire. Naturally he took her out for a business lunch that, to the naked eye, was just confusing enough to be mistaken for a romantic encounter.

 

She heard the pricking of a camera, the click-clacking of tongues preparing to wag. She welcomed them now, waited with bated breath for the final denoument.

When the footage turned up on tv he was horrified, but AJ saw her way out.

She’d already started speaking with a young, blond worker by the name of Dolph Ziggler, who had ambitions similar to her own and could see something in AJ, the same thing Vince had seen in her, an almost demonic work ethic and an infallible sense of taste. He liked her a lot, and they seemed to fit together perfectly besides. If she could tolerate his ego, she could ignore his weaknesses. 

AJ tested herself; pushing up against John, trying to make herself seem desperately coquettish. Naturally he freaked out; pressure a man just long enough and he’ll bite off his wrist trying to get away from you, her mother always said – John was no exception when the notion of being shackled to AJ occurred to him. Being wed and netted with John was nowhere near what AJ wanted. How easily he played into her plans, and how totally he’d failed to protect himself.

That was how a widow drew her prey into her web. In pretending to be above reproach, in putting on the weeds of vulnerability, she became the aggressor. By the time John took notice of her fangs they were sunk inches deep into his skin and pumping the poison of mistrust into his veins.

But he disentangled himself from her, treated her like a child, a mental patient, a fool. AJ couldn’t abide being seen as an idiot, so she made herself stronger, a queen beyond reproach.

She returned with an army, with a man all her own.

*** 

No one in the company had suspected that AJ and Dolph had their own alliance going. It was the best political move she could have made and, again, she was on the receiving end of plaudits from McMahon. She was a brilliant strategist, an assessment she thoroughly agreed with, though they would never e eth full extent of her devious nature. Like an iceberg half-submerged, she was deadly in her depths, only the trace suggestion of her craftiness showing up in a smile, or a laugh.

But if nobody cared to plumb AJ’s depths, then AJ didn’t even pretend to be a slave to the social demands of the audience. They wanted a happily ever after ending for little AJ; castles in the air and clouds, and the silk-dressed princess to fall into the arms of her satin-clad prince, her days of polygamy and wickedness behind her. But that wasn’t AJ’s intention.

She was a tower-climbing, self-rescuing princess. She was going to rule the world.

*** 

With John and Zach fighting like two old ladies wrestling one another over the last scarf at a Macy’s fire sale, AJ tracked down a bodyguard.

She’d been told repeatedly that Dolph ought to be enough protection for her, but every powerful stable needed muscle. It had worked for Alex York, right? He must be tall, strong, but not distracting in any way – a Bubba Rodger, a Virgil, someone whose personality could be defined by what the people around him perceived him to be.

Frankly, Big E was so silent and strong she tended to forget she’d hired him until an errant punch ended up too close to her nose or banging right into her chest (her boobs were still smarting from that accidental chop he gave her during their first time out together). As she got to know him, though, she started to trust him. Loyalty was an invaluable commodity in the WWE, and Big E gave her all of the loyalty and respect AJ felt she deserved, so she had no problem with him.

Dolph, naturally, was the one with the problem. He adored attention the way a dog adored a bone, and didn’t like the idea of an audience paying tribute to anyone but him. So AJ found herself working as a go-between, trying to keep everything running smoothly. That mostly involved throwing herself at Big E, who took to carrying her around like a deflated baby doll while she lay in a full faint in his gr. He had an excellent shoulder for leaning against, and never complained when she had to go deadweight on him.

He was a gentleman and a partner. She’d miss him more than Dolph in the end, his wit and companionship, and his solid muscle.

For awhile, they were a true family. They ate together, slept in the same rooms, drove the same cars, did the same appearances together, saw the same people. Taunted the same fans, fought the same opponents. For though they were united in the mutual hope of vanquishing John, AJ had bigger plans- ones that involved Kaitlyn. To accomplish that aim, she drew Big E closer to her. Once Kaitlyn stepped out of line, once she tried to push AJ too far, AJ would be ready. 

The other girl – once an ally, a blood protector against the slings and misfortunes of the future – had become an enormous inconvenience. A sort of human albatross whose inability to think of the team versus thinking of herself had gotten under AJ’s skin. A queen was not one to share her kingdom; the girl who had once been so very dear to her would have to be dealt with. 

Like many emperors before her, AJ knew how to rid herself of traitorous types who had outlived their usefulness. Though poison might be handy or the occasional brick to the face most useful, AJ decided to use what was best available to her – her wits, her friends, and Kaitlyn’s own ego.

And when Kaitlyn did, she had Big E to buy cards and sign letters: to fake the process of a romantic entanglement, and then help her humiliate Kaitlyn when she was done. Even if she were to lose it wouldn’t be a grand hardship – she would have the taste of the girls’ blood in her mouth. 

**** 

Big E was just malleable enough to attach himself to AJ’s scheme. He was rather pleased with the result – a teary Kaitlyn lying in the debris of her romantic fancy, the scattered petals of her dreams lying about her , doused totally in the rubble of the ruination. 

AJ didn’t win the struggle initially, to her amazement. She had hoping that Kaitlyn – who had always been so foolishly ruled by her own emotions – would have been easily felled by the discovery that her lover was not real. But AJ had actually managed to underestimate her old friend – Kaitlyn won the exchange for awhile before AJ was finally able to put her down, to retain the belt.

She won, and Dolph won, and between the two of them she was proud enough to burst the seams of her jean shorts. For a brief moment in time, they nearly had it all, and she almost lowered her shield, weakened her armor, and let him into the centre of her parlor.

But Dolph wasn’t interested in trying to get closer to AJ. He had his eye on something higher. When his feud with Del Rio made him look like a better man, he rolled with it – and he tried to leave AJ in the dust.

It was a tactic he should have realized would be ultimately worthless. 

AJ wasn’t going to be the wounded party – not anymore. The spiders that adorned her teeshirt reminded her to stay strong, to think of herself, to eat those who tried to hurt her alive.

To spit venom.

She and Big E gunned for Kaitlyn and Dolph, but Dolph had different things to do, better things in his opinion, more important ones. She found herself battling for attention when her next move popped into her head. 

A promo.

The promo to end all promos, the one that would make her the center of attention for weeks on the world wide web. She took the time to gather the resources. She actually subjected herself to Total Divas just for the research, cringing at every little bit of what she saw. There lay AJ’s nightmare, the seeds of her fear, wrapped in spandex and desperation. It was a mélange of terrible decisions, bad boyfriends, drunken stupidity and a Baatan March of exercise, tanning, acrylics and extensions.

The emblem of everything she didn’t want to be. The very guileless crux of what she had seen in the women’s division in years before her – an assembly line of Sables with no Chynas to balance them out.

AJ couldn’t let a generation of girls grow up without schemes and plans of their own. The very idea of letting them breathe and live without realizing that the entire world was their toy to plot and scheme with. Why it was downright unpatriotic to let them think that the only option they had was wasting a spring ‘cleansing for bikini season’, or doing anything and everything or a ‘special boy’ who wasn’t worth the dirt under their nails.

They all deserved their own special role model. And AJ would give it to them, blow by blow by bloody blow.

So when she bit into women she admired – even Natalya, who had done her such a great disservice by betraying her – she bit with love. Like an overly-affectionate dog, she hoped to wake them. But she wanted to urge them into following her, into unleashing their inner bitch goddesses, into becoming the center of their own volcanic whirlpool of activity. Like a cult leader thirsty for ultimate rule, she wanted them to see parts of themselves in her. She wanted to be a prism coating them in the holy light of their own egos.

It was the only altruistic thing she’d done in all of her years of living.

She ended up spiking the value of her own stock in the company for awhile. Punk told her twice that it was a good little promo – not as good as his, but good. 

It was a compliment AJ took happily.

*** 

Nattie, Kaitlyn, or Brie. All three women had AJ in their sights by the time that promo’s impact had faded away, and AJ didn’t care if it ended with her on her knees, bloody and bruised. What had to be done would be done to ensure the strap stayed around her waist, the tally marks tattooed forever on the back of her neck forever and always a reminder to step up her toughness, her sticktuitiveness, her inability to give up or in.

They took Big E away from her, but not even that was enough to stop her. They stripped her of her health and not even that was enough to still her feet, her heart. She had the soul of a king and the heart of a devil, the mind of a businesswoman and the pride of a mother. AJ had given birth to this movement, the twisted umbilical and throbbing with lifeblood and vitality. She would hold on, like Maggie the Cat, as long as she could, for as many hours and days as it took to assert her dominance over the company.

But she needed backup. Every bad girl needed a side-arm after all; Lita had Edge, Sherri had Macho Man (And Ted Dibiase, and Shawn Michaels…and Marty Janetty), Trish Stratus had Christian, Woman had Doom, Missy Hyatt had Eddie Gilbert. The list went on and on, winding through the annals of wrestling history. She needed someone who was eye-catching, but not mouthy enough to distract from her aura of power. Someone who could get the job done without being a flight risk. 

She tried Layla first, but that girl was obsessed with sharing the mirror. She wanted to be an equal, and AJ needed a subordinate – somebody strong enough to stay quiet. Someone who stood out through the impact of her image and her style – a Chyna to her Shawn Michaels. 

Someone like Tamina.

The last time she’d seen Tamina, the woman had speared her through the ring ropes; AJ had experienced her toughness firsthand, and it was a mighty amount of strength she wielded. If she could get that amount of power on her side, well – she’d be unstoppable. 

The trick was talking to Tamina – it was in being convincing about her belief in her own power.

And there was nothing AJ believed in more than her own sense of power.

In the end, Tamina joined her, playing the ultimate bit of back up to AJ’s center ring act. Now there would be nobody to stop her march to the top. 

Oh, Nattie and Layla and Kaitlyn and Brie and Nikki were all welcome to TRY. But try was the operative word.

They would never really win. AJ wouldn’t let them.

***

For the moment, she’s pinioned to her mattress. With a dizzy head, she lies upon a velvet pane, allowing the world to parade by idly. The doctors say her concussion will heal up soon – all she needs to do is lie still and let the medication do its work.

Other people might be afraid of the fact that they literally bruised their brain, but AJ was no coward soul.

In her mind, she is a goddess now. The world will not change during her brief trip away from the spotlight. She won’t falter and they won’t forget her. She sees Punk wearing her shirt and smiles a jackal smile to herself.

So here she lies. Barely twenty-five, and a thousandaire, with a number of puppets twitching at her fingertips. She has the house, the car, the belt, the ornaments of success – the proof that she is a goddess and the rest of them are just flops.

She stands at the foot of her personal mountain, but oh, how quickly will they all fall at her feet.

At last, at last, she is her own heroine. She salivates at the very hope.

This is her world and she’ll forever own it.

The self-rescuing princess, slaying every dragon they throw in her path.

THE END

**Author's Note:**

> This fanfiction uses characters from **The WWE** , all of whom are the property of the **USA Network/Vince McMahon/Titan Entertainment/Etc**. No money was gained from the writing of this fanfiction and all are used under the strictures of of the Berne Convention.


End file.
